PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Kamala Harris teamed up with Liz Cheney on Monday to make a bipartisan appeal to Republican voters uneasy about Donald Trump, describing the former president as a malignant force that needs to be removed from American politics.
The Democratic vice president said at an event in the Philadelphia suburbs that Trump “has been using the power of the presidency to demean and to divide us” and “people are exhausted with that.”
“People around the world are watching,” Harris said. “And sometimes I do fret a bit about whether we as Americans truly understand how important we are to the world.”
Cheney, a former congresswoman from Wyoming, said her background as a conservative means she prioritizes the Constitution over her political party, and she was concerned about allowing a “totally erratic, completely unstable” Trump to run foreign policy.
“Our adversaries know that they can play Donald Trump,” she said. “And we cannot afford to take that risk.”
Trump has frequently tried to paint Harris, who is from deep blue California, as a radical liberal, but she struck a moderate tone during her appearance with Cheney.
Harris promised to “invite good ideas from wherever they come” and “cut red tape,” and she said “there should be a healthy two party system” in the country.
“We need to be able to have these good intense debates about issues that are grounded in fact,” Harris said.
“Imagine!” Cheney responded.
“Let’s start there!” Harris said as the audience clapped. “Can you believe that’s an applause line?”
Harris had two more events with Cheney on Monday, all three in counties won by Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who ran against Trump for the Republican nomination.
Their next stop is Oakland County in suburban Detroit and their third is Waukesha County outside of Milwaukee.
With just over two weeks to go before the presidential election and the race a dead heat, the Democratic nominee is looking for support from every possible voter. Her campaign is hoping to persuade those who haven’t made up their minds, mobilize any Democrats considering sitting this one out, and pick off voters in areas where support for Trump may be fading.
A few votes here and there could add up to an overall win. In Waukesha County, for example, Haley won more than 9,000 primary votes even after she dropped out of the race. Overall, Wisconsin was decided for President Joe Biden in 2020 by just 20,000 votes. In-person early voting in the state starts Tuesday.
Cheney says she endorsed Harris because of her concerns about Trump. She lost her House seat after she co-chaired a congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. That’s when a violent mob of Trump supporters broke into the building and bloodied law enforcement in a failed effort to stop the certification of Biden’s 2020 presidential win.
Trump lashed out at Cheney on social media on Monday, calling her “dumb as a rock” and accusing her of being a “war hawk.”
Cheney is not the only member of her party to back Harris. More than 100 former Republican officeholders and officials joined Harris last week in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, not far from where Gen. George Washington led hundreds of troops across the Delaware River to a major victory in the Revolutionary War.
At a rally there, Cheney told Republican voters that the patriotic choice was to vote for Democrats.
As the election draws near, the vice president has increasingly focused on Trump’s lies around the 2020 election and his role in the violent mob’s failed efforts. She says Trump is “unstable” and “unhinged” and would eviscerate democratic norms if given a second White House term.
“I do believe that Donald Trump is an unserious man,” she says at her rallies, “and the consequences of him ever getting back into the White House are brutally serious.”
Trump has been trying to minimize the violent Jan. 6 confrontation as he campaigns, claiming it was “a day of love from the standpoint of the millions.”
